Joe Scott 3: The Body Politic

Losing New Orleans

13 December 2005 |permalink | email article

On Sundayís ìMeet the Press,î during conversation about the continuing impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, Timeís Mike Allen visibly stunned panelists by noting that President Bush has not visited the city since Oct. 11, two months to the day.

When Bush flew into the city soon after the worst natural urban disaster in American history, using the floodlighted St. Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square as stagecraft, he promised to ìdo what it takesî to rebuild New Orleans. ìThere is no way to imagine America without New Orleans. This great city will rise again.î

Despite the shuck and jive, the unimaginable is now possible. New Orleans has slipped from the administrationís priority agenda and the city that put Anderson Cooper into the prime-time anchor chair at CNN now gets scant media attention after just over 14 weeks.

On Nov. 20, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans carried an extraordinary editorial on its front page demanding the nation, and especially the federal government, not abandon the flood-ravaged city. A week later, the paperís editor, Jim Amoss, in an Op-Ed piece for the Washington Post reprised Bushís words. ìThenì, he wrote, ìthe lights went out, and the president left. Vast swaths of the city have been left in darkness ever since.î

ìRebuilding New Orleans is our breakfast-table conversation, our lunchtime chatter, our pillow talkÖWe want word from Washington that a great city will not be left to die,î describing the flooding as a ìfederal engineering failure with multi-billionñdollar consequences.î

Sundayís New York Times editorial said ìwe are about to lose New Orleans,î describing the current construction as a ìrudderless ship,î focusing on the levee system and suggesting that rumbles about the proposed cost of better levees have grown louder in Washington. ìOnly the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action.î

The price tag for higher levees is well over $32 billion ñ just 1.2% of this yearís estimated $2.6 trillion dollar budget. Compare that with total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror, which have topped $300 billion.

The newsweeklies buzz about fresh new ideas the president would like to accomplish in 2006. Adjusting his billion-dollar infrastructure priorities to favor the Gulf Coast and New Orleans - not Iraq or Baghdad ñ would be a small step toward redeeming his promise to the Big Easy. Today, betrayal is the operative word.

Gene McCarthy: Man of Conscience

10 December 2005 |permalink | email article

Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, 89, the Minnesota liberal Democrat and one-time college professor whose insurgent campaign toppled President Lyndon Johnsonís re-election drive in New Hampshire amid the Vietnam War tumult of 1968, died Saturday. But he forced the Democratic Party to take his anti-war message seriously.

An angry McCarthy, after hearing the Johnson administration arrogantly defend its right to reinterpret the Constitutional war-making powers of Congress, shouted in a Capitol corridor 15 months before the 1968 election, ìThere is only one thing to do ñ take it to the country.î

Deciding to challenge Johnson, the senator, a former Catholic novice monk in the Benedictine order, said, ìThere comes a time when an honorable man simply has to raise the flag.î

His death is a dÈj‡ vu moment for a sputtering Democratic Party. A shameful number of Senate Democrats voted for the Iraq war, including many potential 2008 candidates - with the notable exception of the McCarthyesque anti-war Russ Feingold. Perhaps some solons may now find the courage to unequivocally speak out.

Interviewed a month before the 2003 invasion, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel, ìLord of the Flies,î in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.

ìThe bullies are running it,î McCarthy said, ìBush is bullying everything.î

At the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles McCarthy nominated Adlai E. Stevenson, a twice-defeated candidate for president as delegates were preparing to select John F. Kennedy. ìDo not reject this man who made us all proud to be Democrats.î He never quite matched that electrifying moment as an acid-tongued campaigner in 1968, which attracted a legion of followers to his insurgent message.

After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, McCarthy lost the nomination to Hubert H. Humphrey in a riotous Chicago donnybrook. For decades afterwards he played the self-styled Democratic Party scold and contrarian ñ endorsing Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980. He left the Senate in 1970. Quirky yes but, as has been observed, cant free which marks him as a rare and seminal U.S. political figure.

In 1993, the New York Times asked McCarthy, who ran for president four times, whether he still had the Presidential bug - a phrase William Safire describes in his New Political Dictionary as a mythical insect whose bite results in Presidential fever.

He relied, ìWe McCarthys live a long time. My grandfather made it to 98Ö. Iíve still got time for ñ letís see ñ five more tries.î Baseball, politics, poetry and theology were his metaphors for life. But he had a sardonic sense of humor, long gone missing.

Doublespeak on Torture

08 December 2005 |permalink | email article

President Bush says ìwe do not do torture.î But questions persist about the administrationís equivocal position on the moral issue and the CIAís treatment of detainees in American custody.

The spark igniting the furor was a Nov. 2 Washington Post article which reported the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important Al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.

The Post said the secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up nearly four years ago at various times in at least eight countries. Known as ìblack sitesî in classified government and congressional documents, their existence and locations are known only to Bush and a handful of U.S. officials and top intelligence officers in host countries.

Spiegel Online, the German newsweekly, has reported that 437 secret CIA flights to transport terror suspects through Europe have passed through German airports since 2001, more than three times those previously reported.

The torture issue has put Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the defensive in Europe about where the U.S. draws the line. She reassured German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the U.S. would not tolerate torture and, while not admitting mistakes, promised to correct any that had been made. But there was no admission or denial of secret prisons.

Administration doublespeak going back to Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales’ 2002 memo regarding the treatment of detainees captured in Afghanistan has done little to erase skepticism here and abroad about U.S. credibility despite Riceís impassioned argument for aggressive intelligence gathering, within the law, to save lives endangered by terrorists.

The impression remains that since 9/11 the U.S. has violated international law by sending suspects to sites, never acknowledged by the CIA, where it knows, as the New York Times noted, ìthat they will be tortured.î

Republican Sen. John McCain, tortured while a prisoner in Vietnam, is sponsoring an amendment whose language was approved by the Senate in a 90 to 9 vote. It would put into law the banning of cruel and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

The predictable stumbling block is the fierce resistance of Vice President Cheney who wants Congress to exempt covert CIA intelligence officers from McCainís legislation. The Arizona senator says he will not compromise with the White House on the words in his amendment. Negotiations continue admid reports of an internal administration debate.
.
The hawkish Cheney will continue lobbying for a CIA option on torture. Will Bush veto the bill if it gets to the Oval Office?